Caged by the Stars
by Gracilis
Summary: Just before the Battle of Endor, the Rebellion staged a bold ambush on Darth Vader's flagship, the Executor. Stranded on a planet where the Empire never really had a hold, without the support of his Emperor, Vader is confronted with a freedom he'd never even dreamed of. But when you can do anything, for the first time in your life, how do you decide what to do?
1. Chapter 1

A dark shadow loomed over Mos Eisley. Flaming debris rained from the sky, and the groaning of the _Executor_ rumbled like a fierce monster stalking through the deserted streets. She seemed almost graceful as she descended. Something that did not describe the situation on her bridge with any degree of accuracy. Variously dressed Imperial crewmen bustled about, pressing buttons, shouting commands, and running back and forth in vain efforts to prevent the crash. Only two people were still on the bridge: Admiral Firmus Piett, and Darth Vader. They watched as the wind whipped the sand up to meet the starship, both thinking very different thoughts.

"Lord Vader, may I sugg—"

"No, Admiral, you may not." Vader turned away from the window. There was nothing of note to see out there, anyway. His mind slipped back to thoughts of killing Piett. It would be incredibly easy. Already, he could feel the Force reaching out towards the man. Piett flinched, and a hand went to his collar, in an effort to loosen it, as if that would help.

But no. As much as Vader hated it, he would keep Piett alive at this point, if only because the man wasn't entirely stupid: something in short supply in the Empire's commanding officers lately. And there was a little voice, too - one he'd been ignoring for years - that told him that he'd killed enough. Too many.

The nose of the _Executor_ touched down on the desert, and crumbled under her bulk as it did. The ship skidded on its tip for a few miles, creating massive sandy bow-waves, and destroying everything in her path.

The windows shattered, and though the wave of razor glass parted at Vader's hand, those unlucky enough to be monitoring the starship's systems screamed in a baleful chorus as the shards ripped through their flesh. Sand swept in after the glass, as the _Executor's_ bulk ground to a halt in the desert, sending the ancient desert sands up into a surge, washing over the ship, and over the unfortunate south side of Mos Eisley. Admiral Piett screamed, as he plunged out of the window frame. There was no such sound from Darth Vader, though, as he followed suit. He wasn't frightened, as his subordinate was - the force was at his command, and it caught him with ease.

The pain and fear of Admiral Piett resonated loudly through the force, and Vader scowled, even though no-one would see it. Such weakness. The man turned his head to see his Sith superior bearing down on him through blood-filled eyes. His voice came weak and reedy:

"Help me… Please…"

Vader's scowl intensified, and though his own voice was as steady as it ever was, it was laced with so much hate, and so much anger, Vader almost found it difficult to speak. Almost.

"You forget who you are talking to, Admiral."

With a contemptuous gesture, Piett's life was ended quickly - he was dead before he could even draw a fresh breath. It was almost a shame, but if the man was going to show such weakness, he wasn't needed. Vader's attention was soon back to the starship. At ground level, although the ship was broken in several places, there didn't seem any places close by to enter near his position - and, as the wind whipped sand into his respirator, that was starting to be a worse and worse thing by the second.

For the second time in less than an hour, the Force proved itself an indispensable ally, helping the Sith who wielded it remove the rivets on the outer hull of the ship, and break the weld that held it in place. His breath came in ragged wheezes, even with the respirator, and under that, a mechanical hum that meant the system was trying to purge itself of the sand. Vader huffed as his breath came back. He hated sand.

It seemed that more of its crew had followed the Admiral's example, rather than Vader's - their broken bodies lay strewn about. It looked like the crash landing had been much worse than Vader had assumed. Nevertheless, he walked with a purpose - he needed to contact his master; the Emperor needed to know that his apprentice would be unable to meet with him on Endor, as had been commanded. The Emperor would be angry, of course, but it would be worse if he wasn't contacted.

—

As it turned out, Lord Vader was not completely alone on the ship - as he neared the communication suite, a clone trooper - one of the few left after the fallout of the Clone Wars, and the adoption of 'volunteers' in the Empire - struggled to his feet, and saluted. Vader recognised this one. He'd been his commander, and dare he say, a good friend of Anakin Skywalker during the war with the separatists; Rex— no, CT-7567 was a good soldier. Perhaps a little too close to the rebels in his thinking sometimes, but loyal, and when kept on a suitably short leash, a good soldier.

"My… Lord?" He always had trouble with the formalities of serving in the Empire - the influence of the late Skywalker hadn't been lost on the clone, then. No matter. As long as he served his purpose.

"Sweep the ship, Commander. Find some able-bodied soldiers, and report back here." Vader didn't turn to look at Rex as he passed, opening and closing the arthritic automatic doors with a wave of his hand.

The damage must have been more extensive than Vader had thought - no matter what channel he used, Imperial or not, the Death Star's operators would not pick up. A steel fist came down on the keyboard, and the thing buckled under the force of the blow. The doors were the next to go, bending outwards like tin foil at the will of the Force. Standing in the ruined doorway, Vader was met by his commander, and six other Stormtroopers - mostly of the volunteer kind, but a few clones remained. Impressive, given their accelerated growth, and overall shorter lifespans. That was likely why they signed up to serve on the _Executor -_ Vader was well aware of the rumours that surrounded life expectancy on his ship.

"These are all the able-bodied men I could find, my lord." No hesitation. But fear. So much fear.

Vader's breath rattled out in an asthmatic hiss, as he stalked up and down the short row of men. None of them moved as he passed, but their fear resonated through the force. Fear of him. Fear that any one action might bring about their death. Good. Loyalty only went so far, but fear… Fear was a permanent condition. When Vader was once again standing in front of Rex, the man knew his lines well enough to force them through:

"What are your orders, my lord?"

"Find me a long-range transmitter - the one on this ship is damaged."

"Yes, my lord." The clone saluted stiffly, and turned, barking orders at his squad as he went. They obeyed without question - there were few fool enough to disobey an order in Darth Vader's presence - and soon even their marching ceased to echo inside the hallways of the ship. In the silence, Vader stood still, hands clasped behind his back, and an air of thoughtfulness about him - he had felt it some time ago: a disturbance in the Force. A disturbance that was different to the usual small ripples new Force-sensitives made when they became aware of their 'powers'. This felt more like… Like a removal. Less like a drop in the bucket, and more like a lump of ice melting. But… What was it? The cyborg sith concentrated, letting hatred and anger seep into the Force and expand his reach. What… What was it? The starship around Vader groaned, as if the sheer force of will he was exerting to locate the disturbance was causing some physical pressure.

And then, he realised. The pressure - the anger, the hatred - evaporated like rain on Mustafar, and in their place, just surprise: Palpatine was gone. Breath hissed forth from the black mask as Vader sighed, and his posture curled forwards ever so slightly (his version of having to lean on something to steady himself). No wonder the disturbance had felt so all-encompassing, and so unlike anything else he'd ever felt through it. Palpatine was the strongest Sith- the strongest Force-sensitive he had ever known. His presence in the force had been a constant for years, like a mist that he'd never noticed shrouding everything.

And the new world Vader saw without that mist was a strange one. If Palpatine had become one with the force, then did that mean the Empire was gone? Did that mean the Death Star was gone? Surely it must be so, because how could either of those things exist without the Emperor? He doubted even Darth Vader - the man reputed to be some kind of soulless droid, some kind of ex-jedi scum and certainly many kinds of murderer - had the kind of influence the Emperor had commanded. That wizened old man had built a galactic empire on his reputation… Vader was small in comparison with the Emperor.

Except… The fact remained that the Emperor was likely dead - or at least he had withdrawn himself from the Force somehow. So that just left him. The apprentice. The slave. The survivor.

The sharp staccato of blaster fire shattered his thoughts like fragile glass. It was close. Very close.

Too close.

—

The troopers noticed nothing out of the ordinary for a while - they were too busy returning the fire from the spaceport scum, anyway. Despite Rex's best efforts to have things between them and the locals remain peaceful, there was just something about an Imperial uniform that made people angry. They were shouting things, too. The Empire has fallen, they said. Your master is dead, they said. Rex tried not to think about the implications, and just concentrated on shooting the aggressors.

And then the side of the _Executor_ swelled like a blister, and popped with a tearing sound. Vader had heard the battle, it seemed. A Rodian flew sideways with an unnatural kink in his neck. The clone commander managed a grim smile - if there was anything good he could say about Vader, it was that at least the man wasn't shy about fighting alongside his troops. Though Rex betted that they were in about as much danger as the space-scum the man was currently strangling.

At the sight of this, the motley bunch that had followed the troopers from Mos Eisley began to lose some of the cocky attitude they'd previously been shooting with - now, they fought for life. A few turned and fled, but none of them were about to escape the maelstrom of fury and hate that was Darth Vader - his hands flew in gestures like an orchestral conductor, and the sand flew about on all sides, whipped up by imaginary winds, as the Force caught the collection of bounty hunters and thugs by their limbs, crushing and twisting until suddenly, everything came to an absolute stop.

Darth Vader turned about slowly, dropping his arms. He passed the troopers as if they didn't exist, and vanished inside the crashed ship, spurred on by some unseen purpose. The carnage he'd left behind was something else. Rex ventured out from the cover of the ship's debris, carefully poking at shattered bodies, and occasionally shooting when one stirred. Sure, they would die anyway, but it was kinder to do it with a blaster bolt, than let them slowly bleed out from their Force-inflicted wounds. Rex waved his men onward, and they gathered around him in a disorganised bunch. But that was the way Rex liked it - he had little patience for the formalities enforced upon Imperial troops. He found his men respected him more if he treated them as men, and not just commodities to be ordered about.

"Comb the area for any more enemies - go in groups of two around the ship, and radio me if you find any more." The clone pointed at the group, pairing up all but one man, and sending them down either end of the ship, "And you, guard this entrance whilst I report to Lord Vader."

The man - a volunteer from Coruscant, who'd been seeking the adventure and glamour of the Imperial army - looked visibly relieved that he only had to guard an entrance. A grim smile played about Rex's lips as the soldier saluted in recognition of his orders. Now to find Vader, and hope he didn't get strangled to death for his efforts.

This was far more difficult than Rex had anticipated - even looking for a man who couldn't be quiet even if he'd wanted to be in a place where every sound was magnified tenfold, it was as if Vader had simply vanished. The clone thought about calling out, but he didn't feel right in doing so - and, if there was one thing he'd learned all those years ago, serving with the Jedi, it was to trust his instincts, even if he wasn't guided by some mystical power. He removed his helmet - perhaps that was blocking out the sound in this case - and wiped the sweat from his brow. It was incredibly hot on this planet, even in the shade. As they were going down, he had hoped the damage to the _Executor_ would be repairable. Perhaps if the rebels hadn't taken out all of their engines, it would have been, but they'd been completely unable to even slow the ship, and they'd paid the price for that failure, both in damage to their ship, and the lives it took on impact.

A sigh escaped him. What a waste. The official Imperial view of it was that those who lost their life in service to the Empire, whether killed by an enemy, or an accident, or at the whim of a commander, were glorious martyrs, and not to be mourned. The way most in the service saw it was that soldiers dying was an inevitable price of victory. Some just didn't care. But Rex couldn't help feeling like the men aboard the _Executor,_ whether they were actually clones or not, were his brothers. And the loss of a brother was almost too much to bear.

He wondered how Vader dealt with it - the man was as changeable as the seasons, murdering his commanders and troops one minute, and saving them with a flourish of the Force another. Perhaps that was his coping mechanism. Maybe getting taking it out on people eased his own suffering. Perhaps, but that wasn't a choice for Rex. He would bear it with a smile on his face. He had to.

A rasp of breath alerted him to the presence of Darth Vader far too late. Rex stiffened his posture and saluted, but he had been seen. Having his helmet off aboard the ship was a breach of regulation. Who knew what was going to happen to him now - he had seen people executed for less. He tried to keep his face calm and blank, but he had a feeling he was failing on that front. Oddly enough, the armoured man seemed almost amused. Not that Rex could really tell through the unchanging mask, but that was the feeling he got nevertheless.

"Yes, Commander?" The tone was measured and regular, as usual. A foolish person would have mistaken that for calm. Not so.

"The…" It was difficult to speak through the rising fright. He had to stop - it was pathetic: he'd been in riskier situations in combat. He could do this. He'd done more difficult things, "The men are sweeping the area for more of the enemy,"

"Are they now?"

"Yes, my lord" Well, this was it. Rex could almost feel the Force snapping his neck, right there and then.

"Very good, Commander. You are dismissed."

"Y-Yes, my lord." Rex gave his superior another salute, and marched off down the hall as quickly as his legs could carry him without breaking into a run. What had that been? He should have been killed, surely? But he was still breathing. Vader had even seemed satisfied with the orders Rex had given. He jammed his helmet back onto his head, and tried to catch his breath. He wished some higher-ranking official had survived the crash. They knew how to deal with that man - the only dealings Rex had ever had was when the troops were inspected, and usually somebody was made an example of.

By the time he reached the man guarding the 'entrance' again, Rex had composed himself. No good came from behaving like that, anyhow. His men needed an example to follow, and besides, Vader couldn't kill him without depriving himself of an officer - surely he wouldn't do that. He might have the shortest fuse Rex had ever known, but Vader was still a good tactician. He wasn't stupid.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a strange thing, being free. Being _truly_ free. If anything, it was almost as oppressive as being enslaved. He didn't even have a master's orders to busy himself with. Or to justify himself by. He was fully responsible for every decision he made from here on out. Had Vader a weaker constitution, he might have felt… Something more. Something deeper. As it was, the thought simply made him weary.

Practical concerns first. Buried somewhere in the past he shared with a boy named Anakin, Vader remembered somebody telling him that, if he was ever unsure of his path, he should take care of practicalities first.

So, first off, they couldn't use the ship as a base of operations. It was too big, too Imperial, and too close to Mos Eisley. The locals had made it quite clear that they weren't going to be hospitable to them, and they only had so long before the scum regained their confidence and launched another attack. Secondly, they couldn't go wandering around in the desert for too long - they had no supplies, and there was a heaviness in the air that something in Vader knew as an imminent sandstorm. He rose from his seated position, the servos of his prosthetics whining loudly in the harsh quiet.

It seemed like a good place to begin would be sand-proofing the suit - uncomfortable as it already was, Vader had no desire to introduce new discomfort in the form of scratchy grains working into the joints or, more worryingly, the respirator of his suit.

The sand-proofing was not a difficult procedure: he had remembered the knots surprisingly well - thinner, longer strips of cloth covered hands, to protect the delicate flesh and still retain the use of the fingers. Thicker bands around elbows and shoulders and knees - a commonplace protection for droids, when their masters had been too cheap to buy proper protection. The result was decidedly un-Vader-like. No dark cape to shroud his movement. A face that could have been mistaken for human. Only the lightsaber at his belt and the hiss of mechanical breathing still denoted him Darth Vader. 'The Emperor's Iron Fist'. He felt… Different. He wouldn't have dared do this when his master still held sway over him. No wonder - there was something about it - something about the way his hands still moved like they remembered the movements, even though they'd never enacted them before. It felt almost… Pleasant. Pleasurable, even. But that couldn't be right - Darth Vader did not know the meaning of the word.

But perhaps, perhaps somebody else did.

—

Rex had served on desert planets before. He knew a sandstorm when he saw one, and the feel of the air, the way the wind moved… They all said 'sandstorm' to him. His fingers found the button at the side of his helmet, and his radio sprang to life with a growl.

"All troops, report back to my position - there's a storm coming, and I won't have you caught in it."

Murmurs of assent crackled in his ear, and Rex went back to watching the sky. What were they going to do? It was clear to him that, in the long run, they would have to find somewhere else to go. They would all need food and water shortly, anyhow. Maybe he should report that to Vader. Rex had always liked his commanders to have all the facts. Of course, some generals found that unnecessary. Some were annoyed by it. And on this ship, causing superiors to become annoyed was often deadly. But… He didn't see another way around it. They would all die anyway, if they ended up starving at Vader's whim.

Soon enough, Rex's troopers were back - neither group had been particularly far from their meeting point, so it had taken very little time at all to get back. Rex explained the situation to them, as frankly as he could. That there was a sandstorm coming, which would probably kill them if they got stuck in it. That they had no supplies, which would definitely kill them if left unchecked. They offered, of course, to go back to Mos Eisley, and search for supplies there. But that wasn't an option - the locals were intent on keeping them out. In fact, Rex very much doubted that they'd be tolerated this close for very much longer, even if it was where their ship had crashed. The only alternative, then, was to search for supplies in the wreckage. The clone commander assigned this mission to himself, and to the trooper with which he had been guarding the entrance. The rest of the troops were to take over guard duty, and rest. They couldn't march around forever, and whilst they had no official orders, it seemed a good idea to rest.

Thankfully, it didn't take too much finding to procure some supplies: the ship might have been smashed, but the food supplies were surprisingly unharmed. The advantages of mostly stocking dehydrated rations, Rex supposed. They weren't exactly fine dining, but the packaging seemed nigh invincible. He picked up a singed pack, and brought it up to his face to examine the damage. Amazing, it was—

A sharp crackle at his ear cut through his thoughts like a hot knife: "Sir! They're back, they've go—!" The voice was drowned out by a cacophony of shrieking engines and blaster fire. It wasn't just through the comm, either - Rex could hear it from where he stood. His hands went for the pair of blasters at his sides, scattering food everywhere, as he ran down the halls. The trooper who had come with him followed suit, almost before he realised what was happening. If serving on the _Executor_ had taught him anything, it was to follow orders first and ask questions later. Or not at all, preferably.

The mere minute it took Rex and the trooper to reach the entrance the other men had been 'guarding'. There was nothing left but a pair of speeder tracks and a single fallen blaster. Rex reached for it, gingerly. Was it… Was it what he— It was an Imperial blaster, standard issue, but carved at the handle with the pattern of a flower. It belonged to one of Rex's few remaining brothers - he wasn't aware what his name had been back when the carved symbols meant something, but now, he was called 'Flower'. And this gun was all that remained of him here. The commander weighed it in his hand for a few moments, then placed it back on the ground, and covered it with sand. The thing would do them no good now, and if it was buried, at least the enemy wouldn't find it.

"Trooper, inform Lord Vader of this; I'm going to go after them."

"Sir?" The trooper shuffled on the stop, as if his feet were unsure of where to go. But it was too late - Rex was already off and running, "Go!"

The trooper suspected he had little choice in the matter.

—

The trooper still wasn't entirely sure what had happened. As it was, he and Darth Vader, of all people, were wrapped up like mummies, and traipsing across a desert. Even with the rumours - the ones that said it was impossible to get a transfer away from Vader's ship because he personally deleted them, the ones that detailed just how insanely possessive the man was - had not quite prepared him for this. It was almost like Vader was showing concern. But the trooper knew better - even without the help of the Force, the white-armoured man could almost feel the seething anger emanating from his dark companion. Vader was not capable of concern or compassion.

But then, if that was true, why on earth was Vader so intent on chasing the kidnappers down? Was it really just possessiveness? If it was, then it was on a totally new level to what the rumours said - forget deleting transfer requests, it seemed like you couldn't leave Vader's service unless you died. Clearly absconding was not allowed, either. The trooper would have liked to have walked a little slower - Vader walked at an unyielding pace, from which he didn't seem to tire from, despite the terrible aches racing up and down the trooper's legs.

"What is your name, trooper?" Vader's voice shocked the pain from the trooper's mind, and the young man snapped to attention, a nervous heat spreading across his face and down his back. What was what? His name? Surely Vader wanted his ID number? Yes, that had to be it. Vader was too high up to care about the individual names of disposable troops, surely? Although the rumours said that he wasn't quite in the chain of command. That he didn't have a rank, that he—

"Your name, trooper?" The baritone growl of Vader's voice sounded irritated. More irritated than usual, anyway.

"NCY-4927, sir!" The clone troopers in his platoon liked to call him 'Nancy'. He could never tell if they were being affectionate or if they were making fun of him, but he did know that he didn't like it.

Vader seemed as if he might have been raising an eyebrow, if he even had those under that mask of his, and before he turned and continued marching, he let out what might have been a growl, or a chuckle. The trooper dismissed this immediately, of course. That was ridiculous - _Darth Vader_ , laughing? Absurd.

The marching was as brutal as before - perhaps even more so. The trooper couldn't help but wonder if he was being punished for something. Maybe it was just the cruel whim of a Sith. Maybe he was imagining things. He wondered how Vader knew where they were going. Talk of the force was commonplace aboard the _Executor,_ but it was always treated as nonsense and fairy tales, despite the living proof that stalked the halls like a nightmare. It was treated this way, perhaps, because everybody was far too scared to admit that it was very, very real. The desert sands seemed unending, and the heat was everlasting. Supposedly, on desert planets like this one, the nights were very cold, but as things were, the trooper couldn't really believe that.

The trooper looked to the sky - the twin suns of the planet blazed overhead like the leering eyes of some cosmic devil, cackling at the travellers it had caught in its trap. He had to be thankful, though, for the white armour he was wearing: it reflected at least some of the heat, even if the black fabric underneath it absorbed it. Though he couldn't exactly find it in his heart to feel sorry for Vader, he couldn't imagine how hot he must have been inside all that black. If he was even a man in there - perhaps it wasn't. Vader didn't seem especially fazed by the heat, so perhaps he really was a droid. That would explain a good deal of things. The trooper sighed (quietly - he was accompanying Darth Vader, after all), the reality of serving on the _Executor_ was a lot different to its advertisement. They said it was a safe position in the Imperial Starfleet. A command ship. You'd engage the enemy only in emergencies - and the Empire didn't have emergencies. Tch. Instead, it had been a sentence to life aboard a flying cage, with a monster that'd kill you as soon as look at you. He hadn't seen his family in a year. Hadn't seen his home planet in longer. And he missed Coruscant dearly. The sound of speeders hurtling through the streets, the clubs that pumped out Cybersynth beats endlessly. And oh, the people. Nobody talked to you in the street. Nobody _cared._ Wonderful. Not like these backwards, Outer-rim planets Vader seemed perversely fond of. Everybody seemed like they were entitled to know everybody else's business. Everybody was so nosy - and hostile, especially when you were just a trooper. The commanders, at least - with their sleek Imperial uniforms and lines of medals - seemed to have at least been entitled to a sort of heavy silence - nobody said anything in the streets when an Imperial higher-up was around, even on hick planets. But they seemed keen to throw abuse at troopers. Didn't they understand that it was just a job? He could understand jeering at the clones; those 'people' had been made just to serve the Empire. Programmed to obey, without a scrap of individuality. But the volunteers were there mainly because it paid well. Sure, there was an odd one or two who seemed to be in it because they felt strongly about serving their Empire. But mainly, it was the money that drew in the volunteers. 'Nancy' wasn't sure he'd have bothered, had he known about the abuse that was going to be heaped upon him.

Vader had stopped. The trooper, lost in his own thoughts, almost bumped into him, but he managed to stop himself, just about. Lucky, too. Doing something like that would have certainly gotten him killed. He wasn't entirely sure why Vader had stopped - the Sith seemed to have seen something. The trooper wanted dearly to peer around the towering man in black before him, but he didn't dare to. The aura of hate and anger that radiated off Vader like a deadly heat kept his curiosity at bay. Then they were moving again, but this time, Vader moved with a sense of urgency, unlike anything the trooper had ever seen his superior do before. Vader stopped in the shadow of a particularly large sand dune, and picked something up off the ground. Something that had been half-buried in the sand. Something white.

Captain Rex.

Vader seemed uncharacteristically quiet after that. That is, he didn't seem quiet in his usual angry brooding sort of way. He just seemed as if he were in pain. Vader turned, and began to march in the direction in which they had come. He said nothing to the trooper - simply brushed past him. As he did, the trooper saw the charred hole in his captain's stomach, and the twisted flesh beneath it, that twitched and bled with the clone's shallow breaths. With that, the anger at his naming, and the mistrust that the clone's heritage brought vanished from 'Nancy's' mind. All he thought - all he could think - was of the gaping hole that would be left if his captain died here.

—

The guards at the gates of Mos Eisley impaled themselves on their spears as Darth Vader passed. Mind tricks may have only worked on the weak minded, but they were more than enough to deal with these peons. There were other guards, of course, but Vader was not to be deterred. Knowledge of the port - of its healers - consumed Vader's thoughts. His knowledge was decades old - Palpatine had made sure to keep his 'apprentice' away from Tatooine when policing his Empire - but it would have to do. For some reason, though the man called 'Anakin' had died about the same time as 'Vader' had been born, he still couldn't stand the thought of letting Rex die. Perhaps that was why Palpatine let him keep the remains of the squad he'd commanded as a Jedi. Perhaps that twisted old man had seen the potential pain the was tangled up with the threads of these men's lives. Vader thought about his Emperor, hideous and cackling on his throne, having heard that Rex had died. Under his mask, the remains of his face dragged itself into a fierce frown. Rex would not die. He would not be allowed to.

The first healer refused to come out of her hiding place, after Vader kicked down her door and set the unconscious Rex on her floor. Even as the Force strangled her with an invisible, iron grip, she refused, until her breath rattled to a halt, and her heartbeat drifted to a standstill. The second healer fainted on seeing Darth Vader at her door. Vader moved on - trying to wake her would be a waste of precious time. The third healer had died years ago. The fourth had moved away. Both of those citizens needed new doors, and one of them a new throat. The fifth, and final, healer that Vader knew of seemed amused by his appearance. The great Darth Vader, dressed in rags, and cradling a clone like a child with a broken doll. He had an attitude to match, according to her. Could she heal Rex? She had said that it depended. It depended on whether the Sith could 'comport himself as a proper Tatooinian, and not as a petulant child.' Vader had almost decided to kill her right then and there - nobody could talk to him like that. Nobody had that right anymore, now that Palpatine had been vaporised in his arrogant display of absolute power. But then, if he did that… Rex would die. None of the other healers would help him, and Palpatine, even in death, would have one more torture for his apprentice to endure.

…

There was no choice then. His debasement was the only way for Rex to be healed. But even with that said, there was no reason that the able-bodied trooper had to see his superior's disgrace.

"Trooper. Go ba—"

"There's no need for that, now." The hag interrupted him, her creaking voice cutting through his asthmatic rasp. Vader clenched a fist. She'd be so easy to kill. The Force could snap her like a twig. He could do that even without it. But he couldn't. He couldn't because he hadn't been able to let go of his attachment to his men, and once again, the damned Jedi had been right. His attachments had led him into the claws of Palpatine, and now into this mess.

"We can always use another set of hands."

The crone had been talking for some time - Vader hadn't been listening. Her thoughts had been drowned out by the maelstrom of surging emotions in his head. He looked to Rex, who remained, breathing in shallow gasps, where Vader at set him. The sight of the man… The sight of the gaping hole in him, doubtlessly caused by blaster fire… It set the corpse of a heart that Vader possessed alight, and the anger he held, stale and poisonous as it was, blazed with a new force. Whoever had done this to his men… Whoever and whatever they might have been, they would be lucky to receive a blaster-bolt to the guts. Vader's mind churned with malicious images of the torture to be inflicted, but he was forced to push them aside by the hag once again. Before that, he was needed here. To do something that Darth Vader had not been born to do.

To heal.


	3. Chapter 3

Destroying things - destroying people - was easy. He ran it back and forth in his mind. How the force could crush and twist and yank at a mere thought. How a lightsaber could burn and cut and scar, all with the simplest gesture. Even his hands were weapons now - taught the movements by the Jedi and by cruel circumstance, given the tools by Palpatine's machinations. And yet, here he was, fetching and carrying for a wizened hag. Salves and cures and herbs he couldn't name but recognised by their scent. It was like the old days, back when knotted rope and crushed herbs were the order of the day. When there was no… Higher cause. But it'd been far easier back then. There had been constants - fetch and carry for the master. Swallow the insults and abuse and crush them down inside, where nobody would ever find them. Where nobody would tease them out and wrap him in them, so tightly that they became him. But now…. Now, there was no master. No work or abuse except that which he gave himself. But the bonds… The bonds remained. Untouchable. Absolute.

Perhaps he should have simply let himself perish in the _Executor's_ burned-out carcass.

Rex groaned, as the healer applied a thin smear of Bacta to the wound. They'd been at this for days, now. Of course, with what they had at their disposal, in a hut on a dried-out planet in the sticks, it could have taken a lot longer. It couldn't be said, however, that Darth Vader was a patient man. The hag's orders were beginning to grate on his nerves. Do this, do that, she said. Take those rags off, wear this disguise… The only reason he hadn't killed her yet was the clone. That damn Rex who meant so much. Too much like a rebel in his thinking than was good for him. Too human than a disposable soldier should have been. This, too, grated on Vader's nerves.

The young trooper - 'Nancy' - stood at the back of the room, his gaze twitching back and forth between the old woman, and Vader. The man wasn't a force-sensitive by any means, but even he could feel the overall tension in the room. Vader radiating his usual seething hatred and anger, plus something… Something else. Nancy had never seen Vader like this… Frustration, was it? He supposed that was a good thing, all things given - the Sith was like a taught elastic band: he was going to snap pretty soon, and Nancy was pretty sure he didn't want to be around when it happened. But in a way, Nancy supposed that he couldn't exactly blame Vader - he was reputed to be an emotionless droid-man, but even a fool could see that the man was more a roiling ball of emotion. Mostly anger and hatred and such, but Nancy supposed that it wasn't such a stretch to maybe believe that other things might be mixed in with all that. Well, actually maybe it was - even with his suppositions, Nancy still couldn't quite imagine Darth Vader ever caring about another being's life.

But, then again, if he didn't care, why had he stayed to help in the first place? Why had be picked Rex up out of the sand, and not just left him to die? Ugh… He really had to stop thinking about this stuff: it was giving him a headache. As if she knew that his thought had trailed to an end, the old woman handed the trooper a rag - one of the ones that he and Vader had used to help them survive the sandstorm. By now, he knew what to do - he rose, and moved to the woman's kitchen to soak the rag in the lukewarm bowl of water there. Just after he cleared the doorway, several jars appeared there, smashing into splinters on the walls and floor, as if by magic. The trooper kept his mind on his task, despite the rising tide of panic in his throat. He knew what was going on. There was no shouting, as one might have expected in such a situation, and yet, Vader's soft growl was far more frightening. The trooper could almost see it in his mind's eye - the woman lifting of the ground, clutching at her throat as Vader's invisible 'Force' choked her to death. He'd been around enough, at least, to know the protocol for that: mind your own business, and clear the body once the Sith was out. He wasn't sure what he'd do with it out here, though. Usually dead bodies were either ejected from the _Executor_ or stuffed into the garbage chute for the men on sanitation duty to deal with. Perhaps he could bury her? The ground here was baked and hard, but the sand a little further out was pretty deep. Maybe that would do?

The growl and hiss of breath behind him set the panic rising again. As he turned, he felt like he might want to vomit. This was it, then. The old woman hadn't been enough to sate Vader's wrath. Hah. Nancy had been wrong about Vader having even a shred of compassion, then. Guess he'd just been trying to save Rex so he still had people to order around after he killed them.

"Go help the… Healer, NCY-4927" with that, Vader departed, sweeping off with the heavy leather cloak and respirator-mask that the old woman had given him to disguise himself when she forced him off on errands.

So… Had Nancy been wrong about being wrong? As he returned to the old woman with a wetted cloth, the young man turned it over in his mind.

—

The wind was still fierce, and waves of sand still whipped at his body, but the sandstorm was well-and-truly over. What remained now were the last fitful twitches before death. Vader couldn't say he was overly pleased with this. There was something about travelling in the storm - the rhythmic motion of walking and the caress of the Force as it held the worst of the winds at bay around him was almost meditative. Certainly, it was better than the 'meditation' he did on the _Executor_ , where it was the silent and systematic cursing of everybody who contributed to putting him into the wretched suit that 'preserved' his life. The senate and the Jedi. Palpatine. And, most of all, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Of course, he'd had his revenge. Kenobi was dead - he'd watched the lightsaber pierce his body himself - but for some reason, that didn't stop the hatred of him from circulating in his head.

Still, the walking helped to some degree. As he moved further and further from Mos Eisley, and the howl of the wind was the only sound on the air, he could almost feel his mood improving. Or, at least, the overwhelming desire to murder the hag had disappeared under everything else. That was as good as he was going to get, most likely. But Vader was used to that - his old life, where he could almost, almost put his feelings to rest - was over. But then, it was likely that had been over the moment he'd left Tatooine and his mother, all those years ago. The Jedi had used him and twisted him and then Palpatine had swooped in to take what was left for himself. Tch. It was almost funny. He'd been so excited, on that silver ship with Padme and Kenobi and all those others, to finally be free. It turned out all that awaited him on Coruscant was a different kind of slavery.

The ground suddenly swooped away from him, and it was only through intuition that Vader stopped, instead of going head-over-heels down the slope. Below him, the sand transformed into a rocky landscape, in which was a compound. Behind its high fences were the usual Tatooine fare: moisture condensers, thick pipelines, collection tanks. A small hut, which was undoubtedly far larger on the inside, and a small droid - some kind of chimeric hybrid of several models, which wandered around checking on machines. These things Vader had seen so often he could almost see what the droid was doing down there when he closed his eyes. But something else piqued his interest - a smaller fence almost hidden by the sand-hut, and covered with only a thin sheet to keep the sand off. From inside this 'shelter', which could have so easily been for the droid, a hand was stretched. A hand clad in white armour.

Vader resisted the urge to rush down there and smash the fence open - he needed confirmation: as frustrated and angry as he was at whoever had caused the remains of the 501st to go missing, it wasn't going to do anyone any good if he just killed them all and ran off. Not when he was stuck on this godforsaken ball of sand. Not when he needed to keep a low profile. He may have been a Sith, and the former 'Chosen One', but even he doubted his ability to kill everybody who would want revenge for whatever it was Palpatine saw fit to inflict on them as a matter of his Empire. So, he needed a plan, and he needed one fast.

—

A man emerged from the hut. He stretched, yawned, and once his hands were by his sides again, his fingers settled on the two rather new blasters he had at his sides. They had been rather a steal from some passing Jawas - they were of Imperial design, but well, if the rumours were true, a rebel cell had brought down the Emperor himself. And besides, whilst their Stormtrooper armour left a lot to be desired, everybody who was anybody knew that Imperial blasters were remarkably sturdy and efficient. He rounded the corner, to the makeshift shelter he'd constructed behind it - one of the spare Droid arms was poking out again. He pushed it back through the gap in the side of the structure with his foot. As usual, Frank was trying desperately to stick other bits to himself again. Damn, that droid had one hell of a programming quirk. No wonder he'd been so cheap.

He'd made a rather half-hearted circle of the compound before he began to head for the safety of the hut again. As usual, there was nothing of interest out here. The guys had probably just sent him out to cheat him out of his money again in Sabacc. Jeez, just once he should—

Wait.

He pulled a blaster from its holster, and his finger trembled at the trigger. What was that? An intruder? He jogged over to the fence, where he could have sworn he'd seen something fluttering in the wind. But… Nothing. Just the same old crappy fence with the same old welded patches.

But… They'd never fixed that hole, had they? Just put some wood up against it. And now the wood was gone and the wire had been neatly fused together. He bent to inspect it, but before he could, his body was seized by some impossibly strong, and impossibly invisible force, and he found himself unable to move. He turned, without his body doing anything at all, and came face to face with…

Some kind of scavenger-type in a raggedy leather cloak, and with their face covered with a respirator. The scavenger's hand was held up in the kind of gesture one might use to hold a glass of water, and, despite his disturbing inability to move, the man who'd been patrolling the compound laughed. The whole thing was just ridiculous! Who did this scavenger think he was? Darth Vader? Certainly had the breathing for it, he'd give the intruder that. But no matter how convincing an impression he did, and intruder was an intruder, and despite the force unseen holding him still (some kind of tiny gravity projector perhaps? A ray-shield?), there was something he could do.

The blaster-bolt struck the ground with a loud 'pew', and blackened rock was left with a small depression and a trail of smoke.

—

Damn, damn damn! He'd gone and let the man alert whoever else was in the compound. Vader threw the man aside contemptuously, listening to the thud of his body strike the fence, and the subsequent scrambling and groaning that ensued as the slaver realised he'd broken something.

The shelter was only a few strides away, and Vader reached it with Imperial efficiency. It was rickety, and he certainly didn't need to use the Force to pull it apart, and free… Some assorted Droid parts. Vader was struck dumb, for a few moments, by his discovery. Sure enough, there was the arm that had fooled him - plated with bleached scrap with the components under it rusted darkly. The thing that, under two masks, had appeared so much like the arm of a stormtrooper. With a sweep of his arm, the Force batted the shelter away like the vicious desert wind that, even now, snatched at Vader's cloak and revealed the black armour underneath. He turned to leave, but he found, perhaps predictably, his way was barred by several weathered-looking men with large blaster-rifles. Yet another dragged the injured man away. Tch. Vader rose his arm again, preparing to use the Force once more. But the men had seen what he was capable of, and their guns opened fire with a cacophony of noise and dust and smoke.

When it cleared, the men found that their target had gone. Had he been vaporised? Surely the guns weren't capable of that? But they were sure they'd got him - between the wreckage of the parts shelter, the fence, and the hut, he had nowhere to go.

And then, they heard the characteristic swoosh of a lightsaber, and the harsh red glare that came from only those affiliated with the Empire. Bathed in crimson, the scowl of a dusty old respirator was the last thing those men ever saw.

The blade of the laser-sword vanished with another 'swoosh', but it wasn't stowed away just yet. He hadn't finished the job - there were still those within the hut. Those who had had dealings with him. Those who could tell others that there had been an intruder. An masked intruder who had left the characteristic burn-marks of a lightsaber blow on his victims. They couldn't be allowed to survive. He'd kill them, too, and then set this whole place alight. It would alert those in Mos Eisley, naturally, but there'd be no evidence left by the time they put the flames out.

The inside of the hut was crude, but, once the stairs at the entrance had been descended, extremely roomy - it stretched out beyond the limits of Vader's vision in a womp-rat's nest of tangled corridors and small rooms. It was silent, except for his own breath, but the Force trembled and quivered - they might be hidden, but their emotions betrayed them. Pain and anger - even that of others - had always had a way of working itself through to Vader. He knew it well, he supposed. He ignited his saber again, and the pain and anger in the force was suddenly mixed with confusion. So they'd taken his steps to be that of their comrades? Foolish. But Vader couldn't say he blamed them - the disguise was good. They hadn't known what they were getting themselves into. He found them in one of the many bedrooms - the injured man laying on his sheets with a grimace, and the one who had set him there standing by him, his blaster pointed at Vader. He fired, but the bolt was deflected easily by Vader's lightsaber. The man dropped his gun, and fell to his knees, clutching at his guts as they oozed out through the hole in his stomach. As the red blade swung down on the man on the bed, he looked at Vader, with a strange fire in his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but the words never came - The lightsaber had bisected him, and the bed, long before his vocal cords had even begun to rattle.

Now, all that was left was to start the fire. Vader began to depart the room, intending to do just that, when a data pad caught his eye - the display was on: obviously it had been in use before those inside the hut had been roused by the sounds of blaster fire. A spreadsheet, listing various things, alongside various prices. He was about to be on his way when a word on the screen caught his attention: 'Clones'.

There wasn't much - just the word and a price. But Vader knew what it meant. The Force crackled through the room, smashing light-bulbs and breaking casings. Indeed, Vader very nearly broke the data pad in his hand. But he controlled himself, eventually, Just as he had controlled himself a thousand other times when Palpatine had thinly excused his own affairs with the matter of slavery. This time, however, Vader didn't have to stand idly by. He could do something, even if it was just for his own men. With a sudden movement, Vader stuffed the pad into one of the vaguely defined pockets inside his borrowed cloak with one hand, and ignited his saber with the other. He did hate to use it for such menial things, but there was no other way at that moment, so it would have to do.

He had made it back up to the sandy cliff when the flames reached the outside of the hut. The droid, who had previously been hiding somewhere, rushed around as the compound began to burn - it's masters were gone, it's home was burning! What was going on?! Vader turned away. His work was done here - he couldn't have that droid seeing him and connecting the fire to the mysterious intruder. Not that there were many people who took the word of a droid as truth, but you never did know the kind of people who might be hanging around.


	4. Chapter 4

Nancy had to say, without the trooper armour, the locals were actually relatively friendly people. Since Vader had disappeared somewhere, the old woman had sent him on errands instead, to get food and more of the herbs which had since run out. He'd also never expected the healing to take so long - clones were supposed to have enhanced tissue regeneration, weren't they? Well, it didn't seem to be helping heal Rex's wound any faster. Or, maybe it was worse than he'd assumed? Although if that was the case, why wasn't Rex dead? Ugh… No wonder the Imperial medicals always looked so stressed out: this healing lark was difficult.

He looked into his bag - a threadbare beige thing that had a strange smell to it - did he have everything? There was that root-thing she'd wanted… Some red fruit with green spikes… Another tub of Bacta… Yes, looked to be about it. He turned, and began his walk back - the healer's home wasn't very far from the market: a short walk, at most, and Nancy had walked it so many times now that he could have probably done it in his sleep. He did wish that wasn't the case, though - it seemed as if every time he got back, the old woman needed something else from the market. Why couldn't she just anticipate running out of something in the time it took him to get back and make him buy that, too?

Well, he couldn't feel too bad about it, he supposed - she had been doing it to Vader, too. Speaking of whom, Nancy hadn't seen him in a few days - after he stormed out, he had apparently just disappeared. Perhaps some remnant of the Imperial forces had found him, and they were arranging to come and get Rex off of this backwater planet and into a proper medical facility. Nancy placed his finger into the biometric scanner on the door - it wasn't a very good one, he had to say. The hand-plates and I.D. scanners on the Imperial ships were much more efficient. But they were probably also expensive, and these little finger plates could be installed even by an idiot. The door creaked its way open once it had verified that he was one of the 'occupants', and he made his way back to the woman would inevitably be - in her little den of healing with Rex.

But… She wasn't. Rex was still in there, breathing lightly with a fresh bandage over his stomach, and a cup of the watery stuff that the woman liked to drink was cooling on the floor, but she herself was missing. It was strange, like something vitally important was missing. He set his supplies on the ground there, and shrugged off the cloak he'd been wearing to keep the wind from his back, folded it neatly, and placed it with the jars (hovel or not, he still couldn't even consider just dumping clothing on the ground). Silence permeated the rooms, broken only by Rex's breathing, and… And some quiet voices, coming from… Somewhere. One of them sounded… Almost female. Was it the old woman? He had to get closer…

Imperial training was very sketchy when it came to stealth missions and such - Troopers had little use for it: their purpose was to overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers. Stealth was left to the agents of the Empire - a select few individuals who showed enough promise to be able to handle solo missions. But the lack of clumsy armour made him quiet, and the soft fabric of his makeshift shoes prevented his steps echoing through the hovel. And so, he found himself crouched under a window, listening to a conversation.

The first voice - clearly put through some kind of voice-scrambling program - was in the middle of a sentence: "… Is there, you need to be careful. Don't do anything on your own - wait until I get there with Red Five."

The second voice was obviously the old woman - she'd spoken to Nancy enough for him to be able to recognise it easily: "Very well, I'll wait for you to get here. Don't take too long."

Wait… They were cutting off the transmission? That meant she—

"You know, trooper, it's bad manners to eavesdrop on people's private conversations."

Oh… Damn.

—

He must have read the Datapad at least ten times. And still, Vader continued to scroll through the information. It was an inventory. And, listed between speeder parts and blaster grips, were 'a group of four clones', priced at fifty thousand credits. He tossed the thing aside - rather more gently than he would have liked to, but it was his only lead on finding his men, so he needed to keep it intact. What was he going to do? Ideally, he would have liked to have waited until Rex was healed: the man was a good soldier, and would have certainly understood the need to track them down before they were sold to some crime lord who'd feed them to some beast for a cheap laugh. But all he had was some wet-behind-the-ears stormtrooper, and an old woman who seemed intent on healing Rex as slowly as possible. It was—

The realisation crept up Vader's spine like a cold sweat. How could he have been so, so stupid? He had to get back. Right now, or he'd lose more than just the clones that had been kidnapped. He set of at a run, his mechanical limbs creaking with the unfamiliar movement, and hurriedly swathed himself in his borrowed disguise. It was probably tagged with a tracker, if his hunch was right, but that didn't really matter very much at that moment - the hag knowing where he was, versus being stopped before he could get back to Rex and 'NCY' was an acceptable trade off.

He burst into the hovel, using the Force to shove the door aside, grinding the mechanical parts into rusted dust and getting it stuck. There was nobody in there. Nobody conscious, anyway - Vader was relatively relieved to see that Rex was still laying on the floor. But where were the others..? His hand went to the hilt of his lightsaber automatically. If this was some kind of trap, there was no way the hag would let them go peacefully. Things like that just didn't happen. Not when he'd been a Jedi, and certainly not now he was a Sith, and an agent of an oppressive Empire. She'd have a blaster, or perhaps she was one of the Jedi that hadn't been rooted out and destroyed. She probably bore some grudge for something of Palpatine's doing, and saw fit to take it out on him. And that was fair - he had been Palpatine's apprentice, and was personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds - if not thousands - of innocent people. He wasn't so sure that he saw it that way for his troops, though - The clones had been created to fight. They didn't know anything else, and weren't allowed to, either. And the stormtroopers? Well, for the majority of them, it was just a job. A job with suspiciously good benefits, at that.

There was no sound, except that which Vader made himself. Had the old woman left? With his only able bodied trooper? This whole situation stank of a trap. And he was willingly springing it? He exhaled, and the noise was almost like a laugh. What was it that those old Jedi had said he did too much? Rushed in without considering things? At the time, he'd been rather insulted, thinking himself better than that. But now, in hindsight, Vader had to admit that they were right. There was a sound behind him, and he turned, swinging his saber automatically. He'd been right! It was a… a…

Nancy looked down at his chest, with a look of surprise on his face, as if he hadn't been expecting to see a lightsaber blade stuck in it.

The blade vanished a few seconds later, but the damage was done - there'd been no resistance at all to the blade. Not even any armour to even try to stop it. The young trooper fell to his knees, with a weak mutter that sounded something like 'Sorry', clutching the hole in his chest. No, no no no! That was not supposed to happen! Why hadn't he sensed the presence of one of this own men? With a strangled yell, Vader lashed out with the force, shattering the bowls and jars which lined every surface. What was he doing?! He was supposed to be getting these people out of here! Not killing them himself! He swept back into the room where Rex was, and scooped the man up once more. They had to go. Right now. They'd go find some place to lay low whilst Rex healed and then they'd go track the rest of the clones down. Not the most ideal plan, but it would have to do - they couldn't stay with some hag who was almost certainly planning to sell them out to the rebels. He turned, skirting about the collapsed form of NCY-4927. A pang of… something hit him as he passed. Not guilt - he was long past feeling that, and even if he did, it would surely be drowned out by the backing of general pain and suffering that had been self inflicted, inflicted by circumstance, and inflicted by cruel masters. No… This was something else. Something new. Something that would have to be unpacked later - at that moment, emotion was just a hindrance to the task at hand.

He got out of the hovel with relative ease - they had been close to the door, after all. But it worried him that he'd had no opposition thus far - in his experience, things that were both so obviously traps, and in which he was unopposed often were also things under the control of the enemy. He'd lost count of the times that had occurred to him as a Jedi - not that he really should have been counting: That phase of his life was over - but even as Darth Vader, his enemy still tried it, from time to time. At the edge of Mos Eisely, Vader ripped his disguise from his body. If he was being hunted, then a disguise given by a hunter would be no good. And then, for the third time in less than a month, Vader headed out into the deserts of Tatooine.

Five hours in, Vader was beginning to think that perhaps they'd let him go - did they expect him to die under the blazing sun? They'd have been justified in thinking that, Vader suspected, as he listened to the creak and squeal of the straining servos in his arms. But he wouldn't die just from a little hot weather. The starvation and dehydration didn't help, but he wasn't going to die from that, either - the fires on Mustafar had been hotter. The Emperor's tortures had been more difficult to bear than a simple lack of water. Vader had borne all this, and he could bear a simple walk in the sand, too.

Six hours… Seven hours… The desert stretched on and on, with no end or shelter in sight. Rex didn't seem so well, either - the Hag's meddling meant his wound had barely healed up at all, and his breathing had become strangely erratic. Vader quickened his pace, ignoring the wind as it flicked the sand into the air, and beat it into the traveller's bodies. Eight hours… Nine hours… Vader couldn't help but remember the whispers that went around, that he probably wasn't human, or even organic at all. Well, they were half right - how long had he been walking? Long enough for the concept of time dissolve into a vague, all-encompassing mist, and his journey to become simply the sound of servos and sand, and the slow, slow progress forwards. His mouth was dry - drier than it had been for a long time. Even with the scar tissue that had blunted the sharpness of taste and the sensation of touch after he'd inhaled that scalding air, he could tell he needed to drink something, desperately. Rex was probably the same - even being carried, the man was dripping with sweat. Perhaps trying to run had been a mistake. Perhaps he should have fought properly? But… The image of that trooper with a red blade in his chest was stuck in his mind's eye. It quivered and twitched, like some mass of living flesh, and the face of the trooper changed - all people Vader had killed in service to his Emperor. All people he destroyed of his own volition. But he didn't feel guilty - he was long past guilt. It was just a numb mass of pain, blending in with the rest of his scarred mind. Nevertheless, he couldn't help but feel as if fighting, in that case at least, had been the wrong decision.

Hah. How very Jedi-like. Well, the doctrines and teachings hadn't simply evaporated when he'd left the order, and some of them, he wasn't ashamed to admit, did make sense, in the grand scheme of things. Bound by dogmatic practise and intrinsically weak the Jedi may have been, but Vader couldn't dispute that perhaps, some of their teachings did make sense. Certainly better than the teachings of the Sith - at least, on the end of the apprentice. He paused, and adjusted his grip on Rex's limp form. As he did, the signature scream of a speeder howled in the distance. Vader turned, scanning the horizon - nothing. That was something, at least, but as he continued on, he set his mind to stretching out with the force, silently combing the sands for the pilot of that speeder.

—

The speeder ground to a halt, engine choking and spluttering as the fuel finally ran dry. The rider dismounted, and removed her helmet. Ah. She would have said it was nice to finally feel the fresh air on her face, after star-fighter helmets and speeder helmets, but she couldn't - the sand whipping into her face and eyes made sure of that. She could only thank the Force that she didn't have hair on her head, as other kinds of people in the galaxy had - lekku couldn't tangle in the wind. Tucking her helmet under her arm, she turned to her passenger, who'd remained on the bike.

"Come on, Luke, that thing isn't going anywhere."

Luke nodded, following suit and removed his helmet, exposing his blond hair, and the wind seemed to whistle with delight at having something to tangle and tear at, "Are you sure about this, Ahsoka?"

Ahsoka nodded, "Besides, we're the only ones who can do this job," She had been offered a squadron to back her up, but she didn't see that doing any good. She'd only encountered Vader once before, and they hadn't even crossed savers, but something about the man was dangerous. Unsettling. She could feel the trace of it, even when the man himself was nowhere in sight. It chilled her to the core, despite the raging sun burning overhead. She turned to follow her trail, sensing that her companion was following behind. The Force had many advantages - not having to turn your head to know where your companions were was one of the more understated ones.

Ahsoka's hand went to the saber that bumped against her hip as she walked. It made her feel more secure, to have one hand on her weapon. She couldn't say she didn't dread finding Vader - you heard stories about people like Vader. Dramatic, overblown ones, with possibly just a little seed of truth to them. And you heard them from both sides, too - the Imperials seemed almost as frightened by Vader as the rebels were. She couldn't say she blamed them - supposedly, at the start of the war, Vader had single-handedly murdered every Jedi who'd been in their temple. Her grip tightened on her weapon - whether that was true or not, most of the Jedi she'd known… Respected… Who had been _family_ to her were now dead by Imperial hands, one way or another. Revenge… Revenge was a path to the Dark side. That's what the Jedi had always taught her. Using anger and pain as tools to improve were the beginning of the end. But she wasn't a Jedi anymore, and as much as she respected their ways, there was just too much… Too much _stuff_ piled on top of Darth Vader for her to be completely objective about her goals.


	5. Chapter 5

Ahsoka was hot. Ahsoka was uncomfortable. And to make matters worse, Luke didn't seem to care at all. She walked quietly, but the Force around her thrummed stickily with emotion - even Luke, who'd only been trained a little by Ahsoka and the few remnants of Jedi technology they'd happened across, and who was by all accounts far better with a blaster than a lightsaber, could feel it. He didn't say anything, although he had to admit, there was a sarcastic comment just waiting to leap from his mouth. But the way everything was at the moment, he reckoned that he'd get a fist to the gut for something like that.

And he was nervous, too - the disturbance around them wasn't just Ahsoka - it was him, too, and the Force leeched away his feelings like the tide sucked at the shore. What was he going to find when he finally confronted his father? What was he doing, all the way out here? Another Imperial super weapon? The Death Star had been bad enough - although Luke couldn't imagine how something more powerful could be on Tatooine. Like Ahsoka, Luke's hand went to his weapons - first wavering over his saber, and then clutching tightly at his blaster. Ahsoka had said that it wouldn't be any use - Vader was proficient in Form V - the technique used by Jedi to deflect blaster fire. But still, it made him feel a little more confident just to have it around - he wasn't like Ahsoka, he wasn't a Jedi. Not yet.

Luke had thought often about the confrontation with his father. If he was honest, he'd assumed it'd be aboard the Death Star. He wasn't sure if he'd been relieved or concerned that it hadn't been. He still hadn't thought about what he was going to say. What _was_ there to say? Their orders were to either capture or kill Vader, and he imagined they'd probably have to kill him - there was no way Darth Vader was going to consent to being captured. And half the rebellion was expecting him killed anyway, whether by Ahsoka and Luke, or by execution - the man's crimes were far too great to let him get away with simple incarceration. It left a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. Not quite good, not quite bad, just… Just a feeling. He looked to the sky, as if something was going to swoop down and save him from having to face his responsibilities. But there was nothing there - just the blazing suns and endless blue sky. Keep walking, Luke. It can't be far now. One man could only get so far on their own.

A black wreckage loomed in the distance, and through the force, a chill like none Ahsoka and Luke had felt before. Well, no, that wasn't exactly true - those few run-ins they'd had with the Imperial flagship _Executor_ had had this air about it. But nowhere near as _intense_. No, this was it. Darth Vader had to be at the epicentre of such a disturbing prescence. That, or they'd gone and chased somebody who was possibly _worse._ This was it, and neither Ahsoka nor Luke felt even vaguely ready for it.

Ahsoka, in fact, had been having nightmares ever since she'd been given the assignment. Nightmares about that hellish red blade, cutting down her allies all around her. Nightmares about dying on some godforsaken rock, having led Luke into the middle of nowhere. And the worst of them, striking Vader down, and removing that helmet of his. Because underneath, her dreams told her, underneath was…

She didn't want to think about it. Her hand tightened on the hilt of her weapon, despite the already white-knuckle hold she had on it. Don't be foolish, Ahsoka, she told herself. They're just dreams. Dreams can't hurt you. And it was perfectly natural to be frightened - it was, perhaps, a path to the Dark Side if it was left unchecked, but it wouldn't be this time. She'd go, deal with Vader, and then she and Luke could go back to helping the rebellion rebuild what the Empire had broken. She was one of the few who still remembered the old republic, after all. Sure, it'd had many problems. Many corrupt politicians abusing their power, and a Jedi Order who were treated like the military police, but there had certainly been _good_ things about it. The people had been free. Free to speak their mind, and free to live their lives, unlike those who were under the thumb of the Emperor's regime.

The wreckage of the Sandcrawler thrust itself above the horizon line like the jaws of hell, opening to swallow the two 'Jedi'. And under it… Under it…

Ahsoka stopped, her hand automatically reaching out to stop Luke, too, although the action was rather pointless - he'd seen it, too. Lurking, like some frightening spectre under the corpse of the Sandcrawler was Darth Vader, illuminated in blood-red light by the blade of his weapon.

"Surrender peacefully, and you might be granted some lenience in your trial!" It wasn't exactly the most tempting of offers, Ahsoka reflected, as she lit her two white sabers, but it was all she could offer him. Behind her, the characteristic sound of a lightsaber sparking informed Ahsoka that Luke had also made himself ready for the fight ahead. Hopefully he wouldn't bring out that blaster of his too early - if he used it at the wrong time, Vader would use it against them.

In silent answer to the request, Vader raised an arm, palm open to the sky. The Togruta tensed, waiting for the Force to curl around either her or Luke's throat, but such a threat never came. Instead, the air was filled with the most dreadful shrieking noise. The sound of metal being pulled apart slowly. A great lump of the broken machine behind them had begun to move, as if it had a life of its own. It was amazing… They'd chased Vader this far out, and he still had the strength to do that much. But amazing or not, Ahsoka couldn't let him throw that - She charged, one saber held horizontally before her body, and the other trailing behind. Vader's blade moved to counter the first blade. Ahsoka swung with the second, pushing against the red lightsaber as she did. He'd have to let go of the scrap to survive that unscathed. He'd _have_ to!

His hand lowered, and as it swung in a slow punch, the Force grabbed her by the neck, and threw her body across the sand, like a doll discarded by a child.

"Ugh…" Ahsoka sat up slowly - painfully - in time to watch Luke make his own charge. The scrap was moving again. No… Luke wasn't supposed to engage him alone! Fear forced her limbs to move through her daze. She had to go! Help Luke! He swung with his blue blade - he did it well, but his strike was deflected almost contemptuously by Vader. Another strike, and the same result. Ahsoka was halfway there, sprinting. A step back from Luke, and then a stab. The Sith parried with a swipe from his lightsaber, knocking the stab off course, and leaving Luke's body exposed. For a second, the vision of a red blade cleaving through the young man's body invaded Ahsoka's mind, and she stumbled. Luke's cry snapped her back to reality. Vader had kneed him in the stomach. He didn't see Luke as a threat, then? He didn't toss him aside as he'd done to Ahsoka. Or perhaps he particularly wanted to torture her by making her watch Luke's death. The red lightsaber appeared, held above Luke's doubled-over body. No, no, no no no! A jagged spear of broken metal scythed into the sand in front of her, missing Ahsoka by just a few meters, blocking her vision of the proceedings.

"Luke!"

—

Why did it have to be _them_ who came looking? Why couldn't it have been a platoon of rebel soldiers? The solution there was easy - kill them and keep moving. Here, the answer was far less obvious. It would be easy to kill them - he could see the fear of death in his son's eyes, as he desperately held the red lightsaber off with his own blade. But with the Emperor gone, why should he? They were rebels, yes, but a part of Vader could understand why they had rebelled. Palpatine had been cruel and ruthless. Had Vader not discovered the… failsafe from his days as a slave had not been removed, he might have tried to kill the man himself. And hadn't he worked so hard to at least keep Luke alive, even as Palpatine called for his death? It had not quite worked out, he had to admit, but he'd _tried_ hadn't he? So why kill him now?

Vader's question was rendered moot as Ahsoka appeared with a snarl, slashing at him viciously with both her lightsabers at once. He turned and parried, but his inner turmoil made him slow, and her anger made her quick. The first blade bit into his arm, and wires sparked and snapped as they were severed. And the second saber… The second saber slashed at his face, drawing a molten line through the lens of his suit. He staged back, as the sealed atmosphere rushed out of the suit, and the dry desert air rushed in to replace it. Vader's free hand clawed at his face, as if that would help, and through the rapidly-cooling split, a yellow eye glared out at Ahsoka.

The Togruta had taken the opportunity to help Luke up. But her eyes were trained on Vader. What was that look in her eyes? Hatred? Anger? Fear? Or… Was it that she recognised him? But the hole she'd made wasn't large enough for that. Or perhaps it was more that she'd suspected it all along. The few times he'd seen her before, she'd always looked at him with a mixture of hatred and confusion. As if he was the one dog of the Empire that she hadn't quite figured out.

His breath was coming in hitching gasps - the respirator hadn't been damaged, thankfully, but the exposure to the outside air wasn't helping it any. His vision was starting to blur and swim - his eyes had gotten used to the atmosphere in the suit - the hot blast from the desert made them itch and run. As much as he hated to admit it, he couldn't fight like this. He could barely even see his opponents. And he still hadn't figured out what to do - the injuries he'd received from Ahsoka had agitated the cold streak of anger in him, and he could almost picture himself snapping her neck like a twig, and leaving her body out in the sun to dry slowly into dust, but then, he also remembered her from the time in the Jedi temple. A different time. And almost a different person. 'Snips', wasn't it? And he'd been 'Skyguy'. Stupid nicknames, but they'd had a close bond. That time, she'd left him. He'd soon returned the favour, though, tenfold.

Vader's lightsaber wavered in the air, and dropped from its previously threatening position, to his side. The blade trailed in the sand, fusing it into glass. He couldn't kill her. He couldn't kill his son. Palpatine had been right - he _was_ weak.

—

Ahsoka had dragged Luke away from Vader. He wanted to help the man, but she knew better. It was a bluff. It had to be. As soon as they lowered their weapons, that… that thing would kill them in a heartbeat. She had her communicator out - the rebel fleet nearby had their co-ordinates, and there'd be a ship to take them back in about five minutes. Once they were on it, they could use the ship's turbolasers to strike that 'man' down. He might be proficient in Form V, but there was no way he could deflect a bolt from a starship. It was odd, though - she'd expected more of a fight after she'd attacked him. Wasn't he supposed to be a vicious killing machine? And she'd seen the rage in that exposed eye of his - if looks could kill, she'd have been dead a thousand times over. So… Why not kill her? And why not kill Luke when he had the chance? Sure, he claimed that he was Luke's father, but that was a lie to convert Luke to the Dark Side - she hadn't believed it when Luke had told her it was true, and she didn't believe it now. What kind of parent tried to kill their child, anyway?

After a while, Vader started moving again. Ahsoka brandished her weapon - was he ready to continue the fight, then? She shouldn't have been so kind and let him rest… She should have just killed him whilst he was standing there. She was surprised, then, when he moved in the opposite direction to where they were standing. Was he trying to escape? On what? The Sandcrawler? From the looks of it, that'd been here for years - there was no way that would budge now, even if he tried to use the Force to jump-start the machinery. She followed him, and Luke followed after - he was fine; Vader's strike had probably cracked his ribs, but he'd been through worse, apparently - Ahsoka let out a startled noise when she discovered where Vader had been going. Laying in the sand was an unmistakeable body. Captain Rex. Ahsoka hadn't been aware the Empire had held onto the clones, but looking at Rex's plain trooper armour, she realised that they had been mixed into the volunteer troops. A sick feeling settled in her stomach. So when shed been fighting alongside the rebellion, dropping troopers like flies, some of them had served with the Jedi? Was it possible that she might have been killing those clones she'd considered… Friends? Ahsoka didn't want to look. She wanted to run. Run until she couldn't see Anakin in Vader or Rex laying motionless in the sand. The Empire had taken everyone she'd loved from her, and even after it had fallen, even after it was _supposed_ to be gone, it was still finding ways to continue to take things from her.

Her feet began to shuffle in the sand, no longer sure of where she should be going. Everything was just too… Too much. Why was Rex out here? Why wasn't Vader _doing_ anything? If anything, he looked as confused as she felt, but his lightsaber was still glowing by his side. He was still a threat. She raised her own blade, slowly and with a shaking hand. She struck at the black-armoured man, and sure enough, he blocked her blow. She stabbed with her other saber, and the force held her limbs still before it made contact. Why? Why was he doing this? Why wouldn't he fight her properly? Was he doing it on purpose, to confuse her and then kill her when she wasn't looking? Luke swung with his saber, and they were both thrown backwards with a push from the Force. Vader didn't stand still then, but nor did he chase them down. No, he crouched by Rex, and… Well, Ahsoka wasn't sure what he was doing - they were too far away, but it looked for all the world like Vader was checking if the man was still alive.

That confused Ahsoka even more - to be playing mind games with her was one thing, but to be going this far? But it had to be a mind game, didn't it? She didn't think for a minute that Vader had the capacity to actually _care_ about people. If he cared, then why did he slaughter all those Younglings in the Jedi Temple? It occurred to her that perhaps Palpatine had been forcing him to do it, and that this was his true nature, but… No, that wasn't possible. The Sith's hatred and anger pulsed in the Force itself, even now, poisoning the air. What he'd done, he'd done of his own volition - the Force didn't lie. Anakin or not, the man was a Sith, and if the Jedi had taught her anything over the years, it was that once a Sith, always a Sith. And Sith, she knew, did not have the capacity to care. They were self-obsessed and emotional. Impulsive. Destructive. _Evil_.

The rushing sounds of starship engines drowned out her thoughts. Ahsoka turned, on impulse, to see a rebel ship landing, and the boarding ramp descending. But turning was a stupid, stupid, stupid thing to do! No sooner had she turned back to confront Vader, she saw that Luke was dangling in the air, clutching desperately at his throat for the air that wouldn't come. No! Ahsoka stepped forward with her weapons, ready to kill Vader right here and now, mind games or no mind games, but his rasping voice stopped her in her tracks.

"Does that ship have medical supplies?"

Ahsoka was stunned. _That_ was his demand? Medical supplies?!

"Does it?!" His voice barely raised in volume, but his sentence was punctuated by a strangled gasp from Luke.

"Yes." It took all of Ahsoka's training to not stammer, and she only managed it most of the way. Why did he have to threaten Luke for this stuff? Why couldn't he just surrender? They'd probably treat Rex's wounds, and probably his, too, if he'd just submit!

"Bring them here."

"It would be far safer to treat you on the ship—" Come on, just surrender! Vader didn't answer, but nor did he let go of Luke. She'd take that as a no. Ahsoka pulled her communicator out of her clothing again, and spoke into it, quietly, "We need medical supplies out here. No, no, we're fine, but _he's_ here, and he's taken a prisoner." She hoped Vader hadn't heard her, but given the narrow glare of that eye of his, she suspected that he probably had.

"They're coming."

Luke dropped limply into the sand, as Vader released his grip. Ahsoka wanted desperately to rush to his side and make sure he was okay, but her distrust of Vader had widened into a gaping chasm. If he was capable of pretending to be so weak and confused, and then threatening Luke - his own son - as soon as he wanted something, then she had to keep a weather eye on him. But this did prove one thing - whoever lurked behind that mask, it wasn't - couldn't possibly be - Anakin Skywalker. Her master may have had some questionable tactics, but he would have never sunk so low.


	6. Chapter 6

—

Chapter VI

—

When Rex came to, he was surprised by the cool interior of a Starship, and a window looking out onto endless stars drifting slowly past. He tried to rise, but found he couldn't, locked in place with hand and foot clamps. So… He'd been captured? By who? Had those pirates who kidnapped the rest of his men come back for him? But Vader was with him, Vader couldn't have… Rex realised, with a start, that he was not quite as alone as he'd assumed. Standing meekly in the corner, with neat white plating, was a droid. His medic, he supposed.

"Hey, droid - can you unlock these?" Rex tried to keep his voice at a friendly, but low level - no good having his captors overhearing him. He needn't have worried about that, though - the droid didn't even reply to his question. It just continued to huddle in the corner. Geez… What on earth had frightened it so much? Well… Rex could guess, actually. Given how Vader had been carrying Rex across the desert, he imagined the man had also been in here to put the fear of the Sith into the droids. Why did Vader care so much? The clone couldn't say he could really guess - even if Vader didn't want to lose his last commanding officer, surely it would have made more sense to have just left him to die? Vader wouldn't have been captured that way - he could have gotten far further on his own… So… Why? Well, Rex figured he had all the time in the world to think on that in his present situation, so he didn't need to wear out his brain thinking of the answer. And actually, more to the point - how had they been captured? Last he remembered, Vader had had that Skywalker kid hostage for medical supplies… Surely there was no way the rebels had caught them by force..? No… There had to be something else going on here...

Just as Rex had decided on a course of action, the door to his room opened with a swish, and… Oh… It was Ahsoka, with a datapad clenched in one hand, and a lightsaber in the other - not either of her lightsabers, the clone noted. In fact, even with her hand covering most of it, it looked suspiciously like…

"We're going back to Coruscant, Rex," There was an expression on her face that Rex didn't like the look of, "You'll receive a fair trial there… I'll… We'll…" She trailed off. She knew, as well as Rex did - there'd be no fair trial for a Storm Trooper in the court of the Rebels. He'd be extremely lucky if it was just life imprisonment… And well… He couldn't imagine what kind of sentence they'd give a person like Darth Vader - that is, if they could even get him in the courtrooms once they'd landed. If he was even on this ship. Although he couldn't really see a man like that just entrusting somebody he'd protected to the enemy so quickly. And he was rather assuming that he hadn't just killed everybody on board and commandeered the thing… But then, why would Ahsoka still be alive in that case? Rex let out a breath, and turned his head from the Togruta to the ceiling. It seemed that the more he thought about his predicament, the more complicated it got. He really needed to just see for himself what was going on - torturing himself with supposition wasn't doing him any good at all - but… Well, that looked about as likely as Imperial credits still being legal tender.

Ahsoka turned, walked out of the room with a stiff gait. She wanted to say so much more - Rex had been her friend, after all. She'd trusted him. Part of her still did. But his fate was sealed. She had no say in what happened to either of them - neither Rex nor Vader. Whether the alliance would terminate them both as soon as they landed or not was up to them. Ahsoka had done her part - she'd caught them, and she'd probably have much congratulations waiting for her back at headquarters. The thought of it made her want to turn the stupid ship around and dump them back where she'd found them. She made her way back to the cockpit - maybe she'd see if the pilot would let her fly for a while. Or at least pretend to monitor some dial. Anything to take her mind off the idea that she might be sentencing a friend to death.

—

Vader was in the hold of the ship, pinioned between a pair of gigantic magnetic clamps. He was hardly trapped, with just that, and a platoon of gun-toting rebels, but he allowed himself the disgrace for the time being - As long as he was held like this, he could use the Force to seek out the enemies around him. He could kill them, too, he supposed, but at this point, causing a scene seemed like it was more trouble than it was worth, even if it was an alluring idea. There'd be enough time for such things later, anyhow - he had no intention of being brought to trial; not when he was so certain of the verdict they'd give him. They had set an ex-Jedi and his own Force-sensitive son on him, after all. It was impossible they had any intention to keep him alive. Even now, the thoughts of his guards betrayed them - it was only the thought that something worse than a firing squad might be inflicted upon him that was keeping them from shooting him dead right there and then.

The Emperor might have used those thoughts to manipulate the rebels, Vader reflected. Though he had been proficient with a Lightsaber, deception and deceit had always been his forte. But the Sith supposed that that was really neither here nor there. All his tricks hadn't been enough to save the Emperor from death, after all. Besides, brute force had always been Vader's preserve. That was what he was _for,_ after all. That was why he was still alive, even after Kenobi had left him for dead on Mustafar.

Vader closed his eyes, and the world blinked out into merciful darkness, if only for a second. The Force reached out, whispering past the guards like a light breeze, out into the halls of the ship. It crawled towards the cockpit, but he stopped before it reached - Ahsoka would surely sense his presence. More so than she already could. No, he had to find Rex before he alerted her. His presence in the Force shrank back and then, as if it were fog, began creeping silently under doorways and along air vents. This, too, held with it the danger of alerting Ahsoka, and it was a far less accurate pathfinding method than using it to 'walk' the halls, but he would locate Rex far easier that way. And find him he did - seemed like he was at the other end of the ship to Vader. Not surprising - the Rebels would have wanted as much space between him and and his commander as possible. The 'mist' of the Force that Vader had used to discover Rex's location gradually receded, first through the places where Rex wasn't, and then through the halls and corridors of the ship, until it reached Vader again. So, he now had Rex's location, and a path to get there. It had been a mercifully easy feat. It was a shame that the next phase of his plan likely wouldn't be - he couldn't deflect a blaster bolt with the Force alone, as much as he would have liked to have been able to, and there were certainly a lot of those about to come his way.

One of the magnetic locks sheared free with an almighty sound, like steel bones snapping. The rebels scrambled for their blasters, as if they hadn't expected Vader's escape to happen. And perhaps they hadn't - at least, not _now_. As he tore away the last of his restraints with the iron grip of the Force, Vader supposed that they had likely assumed his escape attempt would be on the planet.

The first blaster bolt careened into his shoulder with deadly force, tearing a great valley in the black material there. Vader stretched his hands out towards the rebels, and as if connected to him by some invisible thread, they rose into the air by their throats. The rebels didn't suffer for long, though - their necks soon twisted with a crunch of bone, and their corpses tumbled to the floor. Vader stopped to pick a weapon from a lifeless hand, and then stalked off. He remembered, with something of a bitter smile, that his mentor had never particularly liked blasters - something about them being uncivilised. He wondered what Kenobi would have made of this situation..? Well, he'd have probably tried to run him through with a lightsaber by now, perhaps whilst shouting some insult about being uncivilised.

He rounded the corner, into a maelstrom of blaster fire. For every rebel he picked off, one seemed to take their place. But Vader was relentless - he had to be, he had an objective to fulfil, and no amount rebel scum were going to stop him. With his free arm, Vader took command of the Force once more, and prepared to sweep the rebels away. Before he could, however, a familiar shape bounded into view, dual sabers flashing.

Ahsoka landed with practised ease, and a sweeping blow that didn't kill Vader purely by the grace of the saber being too short to reach.

"I see you went back on your word, traitor." She didn't shout, but then again, she didn't need to - the pure venom in her voice was clear enough. Vader didn't blame her - if their roles were reversed, he was sure he'd hate him, too. Her lightsaber came down on him, and he caught it with the force, having nothing else to parry with. But Ahsoka was strong - so strong. Vader was surprised, momentarily, before he realised why.

"Ahsoka…" He ducked under one swing, even as the other cut into his side, "Don't give in to the hate."

Stupid. What made him think that she'd listen to him now. He wasn't her master any more - he was the enemy. But it'd surprised her. Enough for him to put some distance between them. Enough for him to knock the gunmen in the hall away from their weapons. Not, enough, however, so save him from the righteous anger of his ex-padawan. He pushed with the Force, but she pushed back. In the end, it was only the physical strength of his metal arms that saved Vader from a lethal blow. But Ahsoka wasn't having any of it. She was berserk. Though he had no desire to kill her, she certainly wanted to kill him - it radiated though the Force, and the sheer force of emotion made her _strong._ If he had been half the Sith that Palpatine had been, Vader might have been pleased, but as it was, it just made him feel sick.

They stood for a moment. Locked together, Ahsoka pushing, and Vader holding her there. It couldn't last forever - he could hear the motors in his arms whirring and rattling, like they had been in the desert. He could only fix so much in his restraints, it seemed. He had to go - once he had Rex, fighting Ahsoka didn't matter any more. He backed down the corridor. He could run that far, couldn't he? Even in the dead weight of his damn suit? Time to find out!

He swung the feral togruta, and she crashed into the wall of the ship. He didn't have long. Run. _Run!_ Rex wasn't far. Just a few corridors down from where he was. But Ahsoka was sprinting behind him. A pipe bent itself off of the wall, rearing like a serpent, before clattering to the ground as the hot beam of plasma slashed through it. Then it went through a door, and more paraphernalia that probably contributed to some life-support system. But he'd gotten to the Med-Bay. He'd gotten to Rex, who was strapped to a table. No sooner than he'd undone the restraints, however, Ahsoka appeared in the doorway, all fire and rage.

"You can't run away now, Vader," She snapped, all but baring her teeth like some feral creature, "Stand and fight!"

"I don't want to hurt you, Ahsoka," The words felt alien in his mouth. He hadn't said that kind of thing for so long. Too long.

"Yeah?" She stepped into the room, brandishing her blades, "Well that's too bad!"

Something snapped in Vader then. Something that had been left strained by conflicting emotions for far too long. Not to kill… To kill… It all disappeared as the hatred and anger smouldering in Vader exploded with a fury none had yet surpassed. Ahsoka realised this a split second before the Force crashed into her like a ten-ton speeder, pinning her against the opposite wall with an impact that dented the wall and cracked all but her skull. She closed her eyes through the agony, expecting the end to come any second now. But… It didn't. He was just standing there. Like he was stunned at what he'd done, or something. Like he hadn't executed hundreds of thousands before her. And then the invisible hand pinning her to the wall vanished, and she slumped to the floor. She could barely move, but she could see him stoop to pick something up from the floor, and then he and the Stormtrooper following him left, stamping down the hall, steps ringing against her eardrums for an eternity. And then, silence and blackness, as she drifted from consciousness.


	7. Chapter 7

When Ahsoka came to, her first instinct was to jump to her feet, and strike the evil Sith who'd struck her down. But she couldn't even lift a finger, bound up as she was in various casts, with her arms suspended by a mixture of shield technology and good, old-fashioned harnesses. Even her breath wasn't her own - regulated instead by a humming machine. That was right. Vader had well and truly broken her. Why she was still alive evaded her, but it would be the last mistake Vader would ever make; whether he _wanted_ to fight her or not, she had made up her mind. No more confusion for her - her mission now was to kill Darth Vader, no doubt about it. Of course, saying that was a lot easier than doing it. When he'd fought her seriously, even without a lightsaber, he'd crushed her. She needed much more training before she'd be ready. And before that, she needed to be able to walk. A tall order, given there was almost no part of her body she could move at that point.

In the corner of her vision, she could just about see a pair of doctors, talking in hushed voices. Ahsoka closed her eyes, and focused on their conversation, trying to pick out something, _anything_ , that could be useful.

"… Paralysed for life, Vader really did a number on her…"

Oh. Oh… Force preserve her, he couldn't be serious? She was _paralysed?!_ That couldn't be true, it _couldn't!_ If it was… How was she going to get revenge? How was she going to fight? She couldn't just lay in bed forever! She had things she had to _do!_

The doctors clearly noticed distress on her features, somehow, because they abruptly stopped talking. One vacated the room, and the other knelt gently by her bedside.

"I suppose you overheard us, then?" He looked rather sad, as if he'd expected to be able to keep it a secret in a Med-Bay that was only a few meters wide, "I'm so sorry, Miss Tano. I'm afraid your encounter with Vader has injured you beyond anything we can repair here…" The doctor looked away, and then stood - if he had been about to say something more, he had apparently thought better of it. He turned, eyes lingering on his unfortunate patient, and vanished from the room, with a mutter of, "If only we were in the city…"

So… That was it, huh? There was nothing more they could do? What a crock of utter crap! If she'd learned anything from her late master, it was that there was _always_ something that they could do! Ahsoka stopped in her flurry of thoughts suddenly. Anakin. Anakin had lost an arm - how was that any different from paralysis? They'd built her master a new arm, so why couldn't they build _her_ a new body?! Thoughts of another person came to mind, too. Somebody else who was supposedly made of metal. If she did this… It was going to start a lot of rumours… But how could she do anything else? She _had_ to kill that monster - nobody else could… Nobody else _should_ do it. It had to be her, and if becoming like him was the only way to do it? Well then, she was prepared.

Of course, Ahsoka had no way of calling for someone at that point. Although the medical droid stood quietly in the corner, she couldn't have talked to it even if she'd wanted to - she doubted she could even talk on her own at this point… Well, hopefully her voice _wasn't_ one of the many things that Vader had paralysed. If it was… Well, she'd work something out. She still had the Force, after all. The Force wouldn't let her down.

—

Vader and Rex sat in silence, as their pod flew through space, away from the starship that had been their prison. Between their legs, on the floor of the pod, were a pair of weapons; a blaster, and a lightsaber, laying where they had been dropped, when Vader's arms had finally given up the ghost. He sat there, hoping beyond hope that pirates wouldn't intercept them before they landed on the planet - they really didn't need another party trying to kill them. The Rebels alone were threat enough.

Rex too was hoping for a peaceful landing. More than that, though, he was hoping that now he was healed, and they were free of their captors, the search for his brothers could finally commence. He hated to think what might be happening to them out there - slavery had been rife in the empire, and he imagined that the Rebels had nowhere near the manpower to root out and destroy all of the slavers who hid in the outer reaches of the galaxy. Slavery wasn't even the worst fate that could befall them, either - he'd heard all sorts of tales about the sorts of species that bought slaves, not to serve, but to _be served_. There were whole markets for slaves bought for this purpose, apparently. He didn't know if humans were popular there, but he really, _really_ didn't want to find out.

He would have liked to have expressed his concerns to Vader, really, but there was no way he could. Perhaps in the old days, perhaps with the Jedi, somebody would have lent him an ear, but not anymore. Besides, the man had his own problems to work through…

The window of the pod turned red suddenly, and both Rex and Vader jumped, scrambling to reach weaponry, assuming it was some kind of attack - but, they realised, it was simply the atmosphere of the planet. This was it, they'd made it. No pirate attacks, no effort to recapture them by the rebels… Wonderful. Well, as wonderful as crash-landing on an unfamiliar planet could be.

With a mighty roar, the pod struck land, rolling and bouncing with the force of the strike. When it finally stopped, a white figure climbed out, blaster at the ready. But nothing came - the wilderness was vast, bleak and barren. A scrubby, rocky landscape that seemed to undulate on forever. None of this particularly fazed Rex, though - he was happy to find somewhere peaceful, even if it did look completely uninhabited. The clone jumped down from the top of the pod, and watched as Vader climbed out. His arms seemed to work, which surprised Rex for a moment, but as they fell limply to his side once they were no longer needed, he realised that what he had mistaken for function, was actually the influence of the Force. Geez, he'd been around it all his life, but Rex wasn't sure he would ever quite get used to that stuff.

The Sith stood for a while, breath whining through his respirator, and then slumped down with his back against the pod. Rex didn't move. It wasn't his place. Still, he felt like he should be doing… Something. And hell, why shouldn't he? Vader could only kill him, and it'd been made abundantly clear that he wasn't going to.

"What are we going to do now?" Rex supposed he should have ended his sentence with 'my lord', but to hell with that - they were fugitives, nobody was anybody's lord. Vader looked up, and for a moment, Rex regretted speaking, but the sound he'd taken for an angry exhalation was laughter. Darth Vader was laughing. If anything, this was more terrifying than if he'd been angry.

"We get off this planet, and we find the others." The way Vader said it made it sound like the easiest thing in the world. For one, they didn't even know if there was anybody else on this planet, or where they even were - for all they knew, they were the only living things on this hemisphere - or even on the planet! Rex wanted to look on the bright side - he desperately, desperately did, but it didn't seem like there was a bright side to look to, not this time… Well, things could be worse. It seemed like Vader had cracked, but he was still the strongest force-sensitive Rex knew. _That_ had to give them something of an edge, surely?

"Rest now, we move in the morning."

Vader fell silent once more, and though Rex had no idea if the man was asleep or awake - the mask wore the same expression as always - he sat down, back against the pod, and closed his eyes. It seemed doubtful he was going to get much rest, and that was even supposing that this planet was safe during the night, but it wasn't like there was a lot else they could do. Besides, knowing Vader, they were going to be walking until they dropped, so resting as much as he could seemed like a good idea.

The grey morning was just as bleak as the night had been. In fact, it was only distinguishable from night because there was a tiny point of light in the sky, boring through the blanket of fog in the sky, and lighting the planet with a weak light. Vader's arms looked worse, somehow. He must have been fiddling with them in the night, because there were broken wires poking out from their dark coverings. The clone said nothing, but he did worry - it seemed like Vader could move his arms with the Force just fine, but if they were attacked, would that really be good enough?

—

"You want us to do what?!"

"It's immoral!"

As it turned out, Ahsoka couldn't speak. She could, however, manoeuvre the Force to press buttons on a keyboard. Naturally, the doctors were horrified at her suggestion. It could kill her, they said. Was she really going to throw away the rest of her life just to kill one enemy? The way they put it was hardly right - it wasn't just 'an enemy', it was _Darth Vader_. The monster almost single-handedly responsible for the extermination of the Jedi. The beast who found its way into the Jedi temple, and killed even the children there. She couldn't forgive a creature who could do all that. She couldn't forgive a creature who didn't want to fight with one hand, only to break her with the other. She couldn't forgive him, and thus she had to be the one to kill him.

If only these doctors could see that. If only she could make them see that killing him - the last vestige of a cruel Empire - would be the blow that ended things, completely and utterly. If only… If only she could speak. Then… Then she could get her way.

'Can you at least fix my voice?' The change in Ahsoka's request clearly confused the doctors, but they seemed to take it as a sign that they'd gotten through to her.

"We could give you an artificial voice box."

'How soon?'

"As soon as we land, and get you into a proper hospital." Ahsoka didn't ask any more questions, and the doctors took that as their queue to leave, barking at the droid to put the machine Ahsoka was using to speak away. There were no more scheduled visitors, so why should she want to speak? A mere sixty minutes later however, it was necessary again, as a blond-haired boy appeared in the doorway. Luke was in an incredible hurry - he even forgot to order the droid, and simply hauled the thing roughly across the room, much to the droid's quiet chagrin.

"What are you doing, Ahsoka?" He shoved the machine in front of her with an almost violent energy, "People are saying you want to be a droid!"

Ahsoka rolled her eyes - the one motion that was wonderfully unimpeded by the condition she found herself in. The rumours were already starting, and she'd only aired the suggestion an hour ago. Wonderful.

'Asked if they could give me prosthetics.'

"Oh…" Luke wore a strange expression - something unreadable, even for Ahsoka, "I see."

Silence reigned for what seemed an eternity. Luke stood, one hand on the speaking-machine, the other at his side. He was still wearing his Lightsaber, Ahsoka noted. Was that something to do with her? Had he been trying to assist her against Vader..? She hadn't noticed him at all whilst she'd been trying to fend Vader off, but then again, she hadn't seen much of anyone.

"Is that… Really what you want?" Luke's voice broke the quiet, and had she been able to, Ahsoka would have jumped, "I mean… There might not be much of _you_ left."

'If that's what it takes. I want to fight again.' Ahsoka willed Luke to look into her eyes - see her resolve. She couldn't stand it; to be bedridden with her task still not accomplished. And besides that, what other possible way forward was there? Even if she could forget about fighting, what life was there for her if she couldn't even speak? What was the point?

"If that's what you really want, Ahsoka," Luke paused - this, apparently, was hard for him to say, "I won't get in your way."

He wouldn't _help_ , then. But this, perhaps, was as good as Ahsoka was going to get - he couldn't bring himself to help, for whatever selfish reason, but he wouldn't get him her way. It was something, at least. Still…

'Won't you help me?' She had to try, at least.

Luke had turned to go, but the mechanical voice stopped him in his tracks. He didn't look back, and his head hung like a scolded dog:

"I… I don't want to see you lose yourself to revenge…" He half-turned, but it seemed his feet got confused halfway through the motion, and he stopped, "But I understand why this is important to you… Just… Keep a clear head." With that, he walked stiffly off, as if he couldn't stand to be in the room any longer. Well… Ahsoka couldn't blame him for that - he didn't really understand, after all. He wasn't a Jedi. He hadn't even been _alive_ when the temple was attacked. She would have thought that the idea that his father being killed by the Empire would have gotten him at least a little hungry for revenge, but apparently he thought differently to her - he could just let things go.

Ahsoka would have liked to have sighed, but the machines keeping her breath going wouldn't allow it. Instead, she stared blankly at the ceiling. It was almost funny - people were worried that she'd lose herself being more machine than Togruta, but she was halfway there already.

—

Luke was sat in the 'canteen' of the ship - a smallish room that had been kitted out with metal benches, and a few different food dispensers - He was nursing a cup of… Something. He hadn't really checked the label, but a crewman sitting by the door had had some, and it'd looked pretty good. Of course, good or not, he barely tasted it, lost in thought as he was. He didn't know what to do - not at all. He wanted to help his friend - he couldn't imagine a crueller fate than total paralysis - She couldn't even breathe on her own any more… It was awful, and if replacing everything with machinery was the the only answer, then he couldn't try to stop her, but somehow… Somehow, it felt wrong. Like if she went through with this, she was going to lose her grip on who she was…

He couldn't explain it - it was just that his gut - perhaps even the Force - was trying to tell him that supporting this was a bad idea.

And then there was Vader. Vader, who said that he was Luke's father. Vader, who Luke had blown out of the sky, along with the Executor. Vader, who should have died by now. The feelings there were still all bunched up in the pit of his stomach, where he'd pushed them when he'd found out about the missions he was being sent on. He hadn't sorted through them yet - he'd have to, one day, he knew, but it felt like as long as he could just keep ignoring them, it'd be okay. But… It wasn't going to be - he hadn't come to terms with the possibility of his father being a mechanical monster of a man, and now here it was, coming back to haunt him.

Luke lifted his cup to his mouth, and set it down again with a quiet clatter of plastic-on-metal. The sound almost made him jump out of his skin. Ugh… He had to get out - stop thinking about all this for a while. Just clear his thoughts. Maybe he could train with the drone again? Now Ahsoka was bedridden, at least for the remainder of the trip, he was the only force wielder on board - if they got attacked, he'd be on the front lines this time. No 'should I?' 'shouldn't I?' shenanigans this time.

With that thought in mind, he rose and went to leave, remembering to take the remainder of his drink just in time. As Luke made his way back to his quarters, he passed a group of crewmen, all dressed darkly, and with their guns slung in ceremonial positions over their uniforms. Ah… That was right. In the fight before Vader's escape with the clone, several people had been killed. Luke hadn't known them - he only really knew Ahsoka on this ship, but all the same, he felt the grief passing over him like a wave. Why had they been killed? There was no need - a force-wielder as powerful as Darth Vader surely didn't need to kill so many people… Perhaps Ahsoka was right. Perhaps he _was_ evil…

Luke tried to cast it from his mind, trying to concentrate on more mundane matters. Where had he left that drone..? Was it in his quarters? He was pretty sure, although hadn't Ahsoka wanted to borrow it..? Well, he supposed there was no point in that now. He reached his room, and the door shut behind him with a quiet hiss.


End file.
